Sale: Nomos 6, Lot: 111. Estimate CHF4500.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 May 2012.  Sold For CHF4200. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BAKTRIA, Greco-Baktrian Kingdom. Euthydemos II. Circa 185-180 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 17.03 g 12). Diademed and draped bust of Euthydemos II to right. Rev. ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΕΥΘΥΔΗΜΟΥ Youthful Herakles, nude but for lionskin over his left arm, standing facing, wearing an ivy wreath and holding a club in his left hand and a second ivy wreath in his right. Bopearachchi 1 D. Mitchiner 113b. SNG ANS 217-218. A lovely coin struck in good silver. Lightly toned, Nearly extremely fine.

Ex Spink 100, 112 October 1993, 45.

The portraits of the Bactrian rulers that appear on coins often have a remarkable sculptural quality, combined with both realism and nobility. This is no exception: what we have here is a youth who is rather serious, even somber, and is surely only in his teens. Given the powerful figures who must have surrounded him, he was lucky to have survived long enough to have struck coins.